Cool Zooms, Part LIV Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gang-gang cockatoo

The Gang-gang cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum) is a small, grey cockatoo with the male displaying a distinctive red head and wispy crest. The name is thought to be an Aboriginal word for the bird's distinctive call, which has been likened to a creaky gate. They are endemic to the south-eastern region of Australia and at one stage could be found on King Island. The birds prefer mountain bushland during breeding season (October to January), migrating to areas with dense shrub and some open habitat during the winter. The birds are monogamous and feed on berries and seeds and pine nuts from wattle, eucalyptus and hawthorn as well as on insects and their larvae.

Canberra is the only city in Australia where the Gang-gang can be found in the wild and the ACT adopted the bird as their faunal emblem in 1997.

This question was foraged by leith90 who shares a wispy grey head with the female Gang-gang, but in the interests of self-preservation, don't mention the voice.

Answer: Charm

Don't flin *CH ARM* yourself with a smile and set yourself to delight and fascinate. Charm is a sort of magical quality, a special something that others find attractive. The phrase "je ne sais quois" describes a sort of indefinable charm. It's quite funny that Gaston in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" upon hearing the phrase, responded "I don't know what that is"...because the phrase is French for "I don't know what".

This charming question smoothly delivered by Phoenix Rising's debonair JCSon.

Answer: Maude

Curtis has opened two restaurants in California: Michelin starred 'Maude' in Beverley Hills, and 'Gwen' in Hollywood.
Maude was his paternal grandmother's name, and as she was inspirational in his cooking journey, he called the restaurant after her.

His menus at Maude are themed around wine making regions and feature a tasting menu of freshly prepared local produce and wine pairings from the sizeable wine loft.

'Gwen', named after Curtis' maternal grandmother, is a different type of establishment, and incorporates a grocery shop and butchery. The restaurant provides 'to go' food for picnics or external catering.

smpdit hopes one day to visit Maude, as viewing the website made her hungry. She would probably end up having to do the washing up.

Answer: Aventine and Palatine hills

The Circus Maximus certainly lived up to its name. Its Latin name translates to "largest circus" and its dimensions were an impressive 621 metres in length and 118 metres in width. Once completed the stadium could hold up to 150,000 spectators and it became the blueprint for future circuses to be built within the Roman Empire. Appropriately, it was built between Rome's Palatine and Aventine hills. We say appropriately because Palatine is the centremost of Rome's Seven Hills and it is also the area where Augustus built his imperial palace. In addition, in Roman mythology, Rome's founders Romulus and Remus held their contest of augury for the right to control and name the new city in this region. Romulus set up his augural tent on the Palatine and Remus on the Aventine.

This question was created by a Phoenix Rising gladiator known as pollucci19.

Answer: Spanish

The Spanish word for apple comes from an ancient variety of apple known in Latin as 'malum matianum' (meaning "apple of Matius"), later shortened to 'mattiana' and then modified to 'manzana'. Apparently, Matius was a friend of Caesar Augustus and a Roman horticulturalist (a fancy word for "gardener") who authored cookbooks.

The Welsh word for apple is 'afal', in Albanian it is 'molle', and in Maori, the word is 'aporo'.

Phoenix Rising team member JCSon is brushing up on his Spanish via Duolingo, and...necesita comprar manzanas verdes en el supermercado.

Answer: Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher

Blücher's role in the Battle of Waterloo was not the first time he had met Napoleon on the field of battle and defeated him. In 1813, Blücher commanded the Prussian forces in several battles against Napoleon and the French during their move across the Rhine. Finally at the Battle of the Nations, also known as the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon was defeated by the coalition forces. This defeat led to Napoloen's eventual exile and led to Blücher becoming a field marshal.

When Napoleon escaped exile and returned in 1815, Blücher also came back to lead the Prussian forces once again. He played a critical role in Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo. Blücher was awarded the Star of the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross for this victory. The medal was only awarded one other time, to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg in March 1918 for his conduct of the 1918 German spring offensive in WWI.

This report was filed from the front by combat reporter and Phoenix Rising member tazman6619.

Answer: Teakettles

Teakettle Junction is a crossroads in the heart of Death Valley, where travellers hang a kettle from the signpost. Many of the kettles carry messages to future visitors, and locals occasionally have to de-kettle the site, to allow tourists to read the signage!

The reasoning behind the practice is lost in the mists of time, but it is rather quaint.

After you have admired the teakettle display, jump back into your 4x4, drive another 30kms into the desert, and wonder at Racetrack Playa, where large rocks seem to move by themselves.

This question was poured into the quiz by ozzz2002, who does not even like tea.

Answer: Kublai Khan

Empress Chabi was born around the year 1225 and she married Kublai Khan in 1239. She gave birth to four of his sons and she was known for both her beauty and her diplomatic abilities, particularly with reconciling Confucian and Buddhist factions.

In 1271 when Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty and assumed the position of Emperor of China, Empress Chabi became the first Mongol Empress of China. Shortly before Chabi's death in 1281 she arranged for her niece, Nambui, to be Kublai Khan's next wife.

This question was consorted into the quiz by Phoenix Rising team member Triviaballer who just realized that the Yuan Dynasty founded in 1271 shares its name with the currency of China.

Answer: Soap carving

In the early 1920s Proctor and Gamble had a little bit of a dilemma. It seemed that children didn't like using their brand of Ivory soap. The long term issue here was that these children would then grow up to be adults who didn't like using the soap. Having discovered that a local artist was creating sculptures out of soap because it was whole lot cheaper than using wax, they hit upon the idea of creating a national soap sculpture competition with large money prizes. Over the next fifteen years the competition became a massive hit. Some of the logic behind its success is that this was a United States in the grips of the Great Depression, the machine age had stepped in and was dulling the use of handcrafts and... well, to carve a soap sculpture, all you needed was a bar of soap and a pocketknife.

This question was created by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19 who used to be a closet soap user but he's come clean now.

Answer: Gin Gin

The names of many Australian towns derived from indigenous languages are reduplicated; that is, words are used twice for intensity. 'Wagga' means 'crows', while 'Wagga Wagga' means 'many crows'. 'Wujal Wujal' means 'many falls'. The New South Wales town of Doon Doon's name is from the local word 'doan doan', meaning 'black' or 'dark'.

In Western Australia, the name of the town of Gingin means 'place of many streams' - showing that though the various indigenous peoples had words that sounds the same, the meanings may be different. Goonoo Goonoo, found in New South Wales, has a name that means 'plenty of water'.

This question was filtered by Phoenix Rising member VegemiteKid, who thinks that gingin would be the right tonic about now.

Answer: Geoffrey Chaucer

In the South Transept of Westminster Abbey there is a section where a large number of poets and writers have been interred and/or commemorated. This area became known as "Poets' Corner" although not all poets and writers in the Abbey are in this location and not all in "Poet's Corner" are poets or writers! Many have been important dignitaries associated with the Abbey. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first writer and poet interred in this area in 1400. Another 200 years passed before the second poet, Edmund Spencer, was commemorated in 1599. The means of commemoration in this location burgeoned during the 17th century. The other three answer options - and many others including Shakespeare - all have memorials in Poets' Corner but dated well after Chaucer and Spenser.

This question was unearthed by MikeMaster99 who spent many wonderful hours quietly taking in the magnificence of Westminster Abbey and reflecting on the contributions made by those honored in that incredible building.

Answer: Dominican Republic

The film, true to its international roots, filmed many of the outdoor scenes in Paris with landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower included. The HALO jump scenes were filmed at Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The helicopter chase scene meant to be in the Kashmir Valley was shot in Queenstown New Zealand but the helicopter crash scene was shot half a planet away at Preacher's Pulpit, Forsand, Norway.

This question was shot into the quiz by Phoenix Rising team member 1nn1, de facto Minister for Tourism.

Answer: My Grandfather's Clock

The story goes that one of the two brothers who owned the pub died, and the longcase clock that stood in the lobby started losing time. Though repairs were attempted, it didn't ever start working properly again. When the surviving brother died at the age of nearly ninety, the clock stopped entirely. An American songwriter named Henry Work stayed at the George hotel in 1875 and was told the story. He was inspired to write 'The Grandfather Clock Song'. Since then, longcase or floor clocks have also been called grandfather clocks.

This question was scored by Phoenix Rising member VegemiteKid, who remembers learning to play this song on the piano as a kid.

Answer: Toowoomba, Queensland

Geoffrey Rush, an Australian thespian esteemed for many starring roles, notably "Shine" for which he won a best Actor Oscar, was born in Toowoomba, 130 km west of the Queensland capital Brisbane. After Canberra, Toowoomba is Australia's largest inland city, with a population of 120 000.

When a private consortium built a new airport 10km west of the city, they wanted to call it Brisbane West despite being 150km from Brisbane Airport. The Wellcamp Airport hit the news during the COVID-19 epidemic in 2021 when it was announced they would build a quarantine centre there for returning Australians.

This question was flown into the quiz by Phoenix Rising team member and Queensland resident 1nn1.

Answer: Psalm 121

Psalm 121 is the second of fifteen "Songs of Ascents" (Psalm 120-134). It is unique in the collection in that it is titled "Shir Lama'alot" ("a song to the ascents") rather than "Shir Hama'alot" ("a song of the ascents"). There is some scholarly debate around the origin of the songs and in which contexts they were sung, but they are generally considered songs of travel or pilgrimage and are characterized by brevity and a sense of hopefulness.

In some Jewish traditions, it is customary to hang a copy of Psalm 121 in the room during labor as the newborn travels into the outside world.

This question was belted out by Phoenix Rising's JCSon, who upon hearing Kanye West and Kim Kardashian announcing the birth of their child Psalm West in 2019, could not help but wonder if the baby was a hymn or her. Face psalm, am I right?

Answer: ASCII

Emoticons use keyboard characters to represent facial expressions and are the forerunners of today's emojis. Examples of emoticons appeared in literature and on early computer systems. The first documented ASCII emoticons were :-) [for jokes] and :-( [non-jokes] suggested by computer scientist Scott Fahlman in 1982. Emoticons were intended to be read sideways. Subsequently many different variations were developed for a range of facial expressions, eventually leading to emojis.

Computers and other communication devices need to use a standardised set of numbers to represent the different characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, space, etc. Other "control" codes are also employed for functions such as making a sound, line feed, carriage return and advancing to a new page.

ASCII is an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It was developed from telegraph code and originally used seven bits, giving 128 unique characters. First published in 1963, ASCII has been revised and extended several times and in 2015 became an Internet Standard.

The other answers are all data transmission codes. BCD (binary-coded decimal) was a non-standard 6-bit (64 character) encoding dating to 1928's IBM punched card. EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) was an 8-bit (256 character) encoding used on IBM systems in the 1960s. SQUOZE character codes (1958) were a compression scheme developed for punched cards by IBM.

Phoenix Rising's psnz ;-) coded this question for the quiz :-P.

Answer: Acrobatics

Acrobatics derives from the word 'akrobatos' which, in addition to walking on tip-toes, also means climbing up high. The French, in turn, used this as the basis for their word 'acrobate', which means tightrope walker. Acrobatics revolves around the performance of feats of agility, balance and motion skills. Acrobatics are not just related to gymnastics but are also a feature of many martial arts, dance and circus events.

Gymnastics was a vital component of life in Ancient Greece where physical fitness was a highly valued virtue. The Greeks introduced gymnastics to facilitate this but it wasn't limited to mere acrobatics. Their disciplines included running, jumping and swimming, coupled with weight lifting, wrestling and throwing.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19 who, once, fell head over heels for a gymnast.

Answer: It's Academic

The masterwork of Sophie Altman, 'It's Academic' was launched in 1961 on WRC-TV. The show has been running continuously since then, though the station did go through a name change and is now known as NBC4. The show is a quiz programme for high school students, representing their schools in head-to head battles against other schools. Some of the notable contestants on the programme include Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon and Oscar winning film producer Bruce Cohen.

This question was writing by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19 who continues to insist that a dissertation is an academic paper written by a pudding.

Answer: Angry Birds

Development of the "Angry Birds" was commenced by Rovio Entertainment's senior game designer Jaakko Iisalo in 2009 and was completed and launched in the same year. The inspiration for the characters were drawn (pun intended) from pictures of angry looking birds that had no visible feet or wings. The initial sales were poor but skyrocketed once the birds appeared on an app sold by the UK App Store in 2010. The app became that store's biggest seller in February of 2010.

BuySeasons is one of the largest on-line costume retailers and they saw the so called "love-in" of video game characters as a unique way of promoting their wares. Some 425 of their employees donned costumes of characters, primarily from the "Mario" and "Angry Birds" franchises. There were others there as well, including "Pac-Man" and "Sub-Zero" characters, though these were in the minority. For the record (yes, another pun) they did set a new standard and were officially recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records.

This question was stolen by Phoenix Rising's angry bear, pollucci19, from the team leader JCSon... nyah, nyah nyah!

Answer: Weimar

Named after the colours of the flag of the unification revolution of 1848, the Black-Red-Gold coalition that garnered a majority of 85 percent in the January elections drew up the guidelines that became the basis of the Weimar Republic. After the Treaty of Versailles (ending World War 1), was signed, in which Germany was required to pay reparations to the Allies and reduce its military (among other conditions), Germany's provisional government met in the town of Weimar, and there designed the Weimar Coalition. From 1919 to 1933, it was Germany's government, until the rise of Nazi Germany.

Home to some of Germany's greatest authors including Goethe, Schiller, and Herder, there are a number of sites around Weimar that are World Heritage listed, including Goethe's Garden House.

This question was debated in the mind of Phoenix Rising team member VegemiteKid.